Jigsaw
by Cadaverous Apples
Summary: They'd slam against each other so hard that pieces of them would fly everywhere, and sluggishly, agonizingly, they'd fit the pieces back together. Oneshot. DG. DARK.


Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.

Jigsaw

* * *

She Apparated without a sound into the graveyard. It was as familiar to her as the back of her hand and she gave an empty, cursory glance around, rain pelting into her narrowed eyes like blades. She didn't want to wait, but she had no other option. He'd probably had to devise a plausible excuse to escape the celebration anyway.

On the heels of that thought was a tiny pop, signaling his arrival. In any other situation, she would have been able to recognize that his effort to make a noise—soundless Apparition was now second nature to everyone—meant he was either trying to set her at ease or he was out of sorts enough to revert to the old ways.

She didn't turn to face him, unfocused eyes staring at a marble tombstone.

"Why?"

She spoke after what must have been a decade of silence, long enough to soak them to the marrow.

"You know I had no choice." His voice was hollow, but she couldn't recall the last time it hadn't been.

"A choice?" She laughed, a broken sound that made him wince. "We all have choices, Draco," she parroted, mockery painting her voice bitter.

He raised a foot, torn between closing the distance between them and running until his feet bled. In the end, he stayed where he was, locked in indecision and unable to change.

"We never make the right ones."

Again, this pulled a laugh from her throat, a sound that clawed itself out and tore everything in its path.

"I remember when the right choices used to matter," she mused and rose up her left hand to the sky like she was measuring the stars.

Porcelain against jet, a brilliant juxtaposition, and all he could look at was the gnarled twists of scar tissue where her pinky and ring fingers should have been.

He looked away.

"Everyone remembers, Ginevra," he told her, flexing his own hand. He wasn't missing any fingers. Some days he wished he had such a visible wound.

"But not the same," she countered, spinning around so violently that he could feel drops of water from her water-heavy hair beat against his face. "I used to read stories of people inventing memories. The mind is a powerful thing, Draco."

She stared at him. He couldn't describe the look. It would have been defiant, if she'd actually had the desire to fight against him. Maybe defeated, but she hadn't given up. She didn't fight, but she didn't _not _fight: a woman more reflective of the times than any of them could ever hope (or hate) to be.

He wished that he had been the sole person to put that look on her face.

"It's not that powerful."

She blinked, but didn't open her eyes again. A panic, a desperate panic, welled in his chest and threatened to explode when he couldn't see her breathing. He wanted to stride over, wanted to shake her and kiss her and _force _her to breathe, to keep living, but how was one supposed to encourage life when all they wished for was death?

He watched, impassive, as her face turned colors he hadn't seen in years.

Finally, she gasped, a choking noise that seemed to stick in her throat. She bent over, lungs burning and head blessedly empty of thoughts, of _anything_ and simply breathed in the water-drenched air.

"Do you remember when you felt your mind break?"

She didn't look up, but she knew he wasn't looking at her. Everyone knew. It was the first thing you thought of when you woke up and the last thing you saw before you drifted into unconscious.

"Yes."

She always did this to him. It was as if being near her made the fractured pieces of him try to force themselves together, only further slicing their edges until he was a bloody, bloody mess.

"You know just as well as I do," he continued, almost gently.

She lifted up her head and smiled at him, one that was so reminiscent of the woman he used to know that he almost thought he was hallucinating. But no, the eyes were wrong.

Or were they right?

"Of course I do," she said, the smile dropping to be replaced with that implacable expression he knew much more familiarly. "Do you ever wish to forget?"

The question was at the heart of all their discussions. The saying went "to forgive and forget," but nobody ever talked of forgiveness. Forgiveness was for people who had already forgiven themselves, and no one had done that. They'd adapted until that ability was lost to them.

So forgetting was their only option, but it wasn't a realistic one.

"Why would you want to forget?"

He couldn't help himself and took a step closer, narrowing the distance between them. She was a black hole, sucking him into her orbit with the strength of a thousand dying suns. He hated her so much that he loved her. It was inescapable. _She _was inescapable.

"I don't." She looked up, speared him with those condemning amber eyes that were the color of the finest scotch. Reflected in them he could see his own, discs of mercury and just as poisonous.

"No one does. It's impossible when our very souls are the ledgers for our sins."

They'd reached an impasse. It started raining again, softer than last time but muffling sounds enough that nothing seemed real. In this unreality, they could say what they really wanted to say.

"Tell me why," she demanded quietly, eyes boring into his and the only sign she felt any tension at all.

"You know I can't answer that."

"It's always 'you know' with you!" she exploded, gesticulating so wildly he was glad that he had kept his distance. "I ask because I _don't _know, Draco. I don't know a fucking thing about you and _I know _you don't know a bloody thing about me."

She'd struck him without striking him, and something akin to life flickered behind those flat silver eyes. He stepped close, gripping her upper arms until it felt like he could rip the muscles from her bones with his fingers. She was limp in his grip—if she'd wanted, she could have certainly made it so he couldn't have even touched her—but looked at him with the loathing born from years of these toxic meetings.

They slashed her to the core. After she saw him, she had to glue herself together with what she could find and always seemed to be lacking a piece that had been there before. He tore out chunks that she could never get back, but yet she kept on returning.

"I know everything there is to know about you, Ginevra _Molly _Weasley," he hissed, a hint of his old sneer tripping through his voice when he lingered on the name of her dead mother. "No one goes through what we've gone together without some sort of connection."

"I hate you," she said vehemently. "I hate everything about you."

His smile was empty, full of teeth too white and too pointed.

"I hate you more than you could imagine," he rejoined, wanting to shake her until her carefully glued pieces fell to the ground in front of him.

A soundless cry ripped out of her and she was on him like a banshee. She pounded on his chest, fists clenched so tightly her nails burrowed tiny crescents into her palms. He just stood there, letting her, a hand half tangled in her sodden red hair.

_I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry_

Eventually, she gave up, fists uncurling to hold onto his collar with a death grip. She didn't cry. The skies themselves wept for her.

* * *

"I know you didn't want to do it," she confessed, half-wishing that confessions could lead to redemption. There was no hope for them.

This was a ritual for them. The script changed, the setting changed, the choreography changed, but the heart of it stayed the same, shriveled and beating far too slow to sustain life for any creature. They broke themselves apart, picked them back up, and then met. It always went like this. They'd slam against each other so hard that pieces of them would fly everywhere, and sluggishly, agonizingly, they'd fit the pieces back together.

It didn't matter if she wound up with a piece of him or he wound up with a piece of her. They were jigsaws of each other and they'd been broken so much that nothing ever fit properly anyway.

"I wish it was enough," he said, voice hoarse.

"It'll never be enough."

He knew she was right.

* * *

A/N: Okay. It is 5:18 AM. I started writing this a mere . . . well, four hours ago. I kept getting distracted. But I really, _really _like the result. Like, a ton.

A little credit goes to Jessica (**idreamofdraco**) for her fic exchange prompt sort of sparking off this idea ("Love is brightest in the dark.") and to Gin (**Gin-Kiohikari**) for helping me select the summary and lots of credit goes to Robyn (**raspberries-rave**) for betaing and being generally awesome.

Two fics in one day? Jeez, this is almost a flashback to freshman year. :|

Thanks for reading!

Roma


End file.
